Lower Wacker Drive may be Batman's underground passageway of choice when he swoops into town, but it's another subterranean network one Chicago tour guide is working to help us non-superheros navigate, the Reader reports: the pedway. Linking more than 50 downtown buildings, the sometimes daunting system was first developed in 1951 to connect the Red and Blue lines at Washington Street and Jackson Boulevard and continues to serve as a respite from those cheek-stinging winter winds as savvy Chicagoans make their way around town.
Chicago Detours tour company founder Amanda Scotese leads tours that meander through the city by way of the pedway's divergent corridors (and she's not the only one), the article says, and, realizing the city's official map of the network hadn't been updated in years, the 34-year-old created her own. Scotese's foray into cartography, the result of a year of research and design work, was published in December. The finished product – one of a few different amateur pedway renderings produced in recent years – is notably detailed and worth a look. She distributes copies at city visitors centers free of charge. Of course, soon after all that work, a new version of the city's pedway map was published – but it doesn't sound like Scotese was fazed.
Now, the real question is will these maps attract a certain caped crusader? Then we'll be REALLY impressed.
·In the Jumble of the Pedway, Can An Amateur Map Fill in the Blanks? [Reader]
·Chicago Pedway Map (pdf) [Chicago Detours]
·Pedway--Downtown Pedestrian Walkway System [City of Chicago]
—Gwendolyn Purdom
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